Talk:Icosian game/GA1

GA Review

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Nominator: David Eppstein (talk · contribs) 17:52, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Kusma (talk · contribs) 10:23, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Will review this later today or tomorrow. —Kusma (talk) 10:23, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Content and prose review

I will comment on anything I notice, but not all of my comments will be strictly related to the GA criteria, so not everything needs to be actioned. Feel free to push back if you think I am asking too much, and please tell me when I am wrong.

• Lead section: fairly short, not sure it summarises the entire article
• perhaps rewrite "a cycle using edges of the dodecahedron that passes through all its vertices" without using the jargon "cycle"? something like "a closed path through the vertices of the dodeca along its edges that passes through each of them exactly once", but easier to understand?
• Game play: again, try to explain jargon "cycle"?
• I couldn't really imagine what the "partially flattened dodecahedron with handle attached" looked like without checking out the photograph in the source. That is probably my limited imagination.
• "The game was too easy to play to achieve much popularity" How difficult was the two player version? (Is it possible to complete any path to a Hamiltonian cycle if four/five/six initial vertices are given??)
• History: "only a £25 licensing fee" consider giving context on how much that is, for example by using {{inflation}} (I am aware that this is a rather imperfect tool).
• Which of the two versions of the game do the two surviving specimens belong to?
• Legacy: would it be worth elaborating on one of the recreational maths or combinatorial game theory things that you hint at?

Well written overall, just a little bit of jargon that might do with explaining more on first use. —Kusma (talk) 15:55, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Source spotchecks

Numbering from Special:PermanentLink/1225490294.

• 1a,b: ok
• 3b,c: fine.
• 5a/6a: ok, but in an ideal world I'd like to see the original source for "too easy". You omit that they say Hamilton himself used Icosian calculus to solve the problems, which is much harder than trial and error... and is a neat anecdote, but do you not trust this enough to repeat it?
• 10a: fine.
• 10b: I can't see that these were "other" versions.
• 13: fine; might be worth upgrading to an external link because of the nice colour photographs of both versions
• 19–24: a single source mentioning that these are popular would be nicer than this collection of citations (these are more like typical citations in a mathematical research article than typical Wikipedia citations).

One small issue, no major concerns. —Kusma (talk) 16:17, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

General comments and GA criteria

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

• Well written, perhaps assuming a tiny bit too much knowledge of graph theory terminology.
• Lead is a bit short (two versions, very few copies extant, symmetry of solutions are possible things to mention).
• No other issues with MoS.
• Good sources, well formatted. Just one query regarding source-to-text fidelity.
• Slightly more on the actual gameplay of the "game" would be great (and trial/error versus other strategies), otherwise it is broad enough.
• Images are free and suitably captioned.
• Remaining criteria are fine.

A nice little article, not much to do here other than perhaps commenting more on the "boring game" (You nominated the article as a "game", not as "mathematics", so perhaps it would be good to try to expand this). —Kusma (talk) 16:26, 26 June 2024 (UTC)